


Prove It

by TheClassiestHat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Because Dreamworks never gives us the denouement we need, Drama, Family, Gen, Post-Episode: s05e05 Bloodlines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 06:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13852278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheClassiestHat/pseuds/TheClassiestHat
Summary: At long, long last, Krolia finds herself reunited with her son. And the reunion goes... less than perfectly.





	Prove It

“You’re my…”

Krolia could only nod. She held her breath as she waited for a reaction from Keith –  _Keith,_  that name she thought she’d never hear again. None seemed to be forthcoming; the boy was staring at her, as if in shock, face pale and eyes wide.

Then, in one swift movement, he leapt at her.

He’d gotten some training, she could tell. He had good form; the linear punch he threw was solid, his first two knuckles aligned with his forearm, wrist tilted down just a hair, power from the hips more than the arm. And he was fast, barely broadcasting his move for a fraction of a second before following through.

Of course, Krolia had gotten plenty of training too – a lot more than Keith had.

The first punch she dodged, the second she caught, blocking it with the back of her arm and then rolling it, grasping the attacking arm to twist around so Keith had his back to her. She caught his other wrist as its hand shot upward, aiming for her nose, and held fast, ignoring the growl of anger and protest she received. He was small, she noticed. And light. Moreso even than his father.

“Keith,” she snapped, her voice that well-practiced tone of stony authority. “Stop. We need to – ”

She cut herself off with a sharp hiss as pain blossomed on her shin splint. Apparently Keith was just as good with a kick as he was with a punch. Biting back the colorful selection of Galra swears on the tip of her tongue, she lifted the leg that wasn’t throbbing and pain and kicked out at the back of the boy’s knee, not enough to cause any real hurt, but enough for his leg to buckle so she could hold him to the ground, her foot on his calf.

“Keith! Stop it!”

In her steely grip she could feel the muscles of his forearms tense and shake as he struggled to free himself, and she could hear him panting in sync with the rise and fall of his back. “Keith,” she said again. “You have to calm down!”

“ _Calm down?!_ ” Keith spat. He craned his head around as far as he could to face her, and judging by the furious expression on his face and the way he grit his teeth, Krolia was sure that if he were a few inches closer, he wouldn’t hesitate to bite her. “Calm down?! After eighteen years –  _eighteen years_  – I find you halfway across the universe, find out you’ve been working with the  _Blade_  this  _entire time,_  you drop an atomic  _bomb_  like  _‘I am your mother’_ on me, and you want me to  _calm down?!_ ”

“Please, I just – ” She fished for words that she wasn’t sure were there. This was not the way her reuniting with her son was supposed to go. Well, what  _did_  you expect, then? she thought bitterly to herself. Hugs and tears of joy and cuddles around a fire? Wasn’t exactly her style.

And even if she had come up with something to say, Keith wouldn’t have wanted to listen. He was shouting still, face reddening. “All this time! All this time,  _this_  is what you’ve been doing?! I spent my whole life wondering what had happened to you! For a while I was so sure you were  _dead!_  Then I wind up in space, in the middle of this  _war_ , this – this  _mess_ , I find out I’m Galra,  _you’re_  Galra, and I think, were you killed in battle? Were you attacked while hiding out on Earth? Are you a prisoner of war, were you forced into Zarkon’s army, are you – were you – and – and this whole time, you were  _fine!_  You were just fine, you – you…”

She had to shove down the guilt that bubbled up in the pit of her stomach when she noticed the way his eyes were going pink, beginning to gleam with unshed tears, as he continued, “You could have come back. You weren’t forced out here, were you. You’re here by choice. And all this time, you could’ve come back.” The crack in his voice there at the end almost made her grimace.

“I’m going to let you up,” she said, quietly, and still in that authoritative voice as if she hadn’t heard a word Keith had just said. “And when I do, we’ll talk, okay? We’ll just… talk. No fighting. You got that?”

He was silent, which Krolia chose to interpret as agreement, and she let go of his wrists and lifted her foot off his calf. Slowly, Keith straightened up from the ground on shaking legs, and turned to face her fully. He crossed his arms. “All right. Talk.”

Krolia let out a long breath. “Keith, I – you have to understand something. I didn’t just leave. It wasn’t – it wasn’t an easy decision. Believe me when I say I  _agonized_  over that choice, and leaving Earth – leaving you, leaving your father – it was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.”

“But you did it anyway,” Keith said. “ _Why?_ ”

“You  _know_  why. You’re a Blade now, aren’t you, so you know what’s going on out here, throughout the entire universe. The war has been going on for millenia, and it was getting closer and closer to Earth. I couldn’t stay there, not when I could be fighting. I was trying to keep you safe, Keith – you and the rest of the universe.”

“And, what, they couldn’t have done it with out you? I guess you were the glue holding the whole operation together, huh? Singlehandedly wiping out every threat to the galaxy, Krolia the messiah.”

She set her jaw. “I’m not saying that, but you have to take a step back here. There is a bigger picture. My work with the Blade has been saving lives, Keith. I didn’t want to leave you, but you and your father, you were just two people, in no immediate danger, and… there were countless battles to fight, lives to save. Do you honestly, truly, believe I should have stayed on Earth just for you?”

Keith was seething, and if his hands had been shaking before, it had been nothing compared to now. “Don’t do that,” he snapped. “Don’t – don’t try to spin it like that. If you hadn’t done it, someone else would have, and you know it. No one’s irreplaceable, not in a war.”

“That’s not – ”

“You can take my word for it. I would know. You should have – you shouldn’t have – you were supposed to stay. You’re – God, you’re my  _mother!_  I thought that’s what mothers were supposed to do! Or at least that’s what I was  _told_. I had to learn this secondhand, see.” One of the tears that had been threatening to spill over finally started making its way down his cheek. “I spent my whole life hearing about how families are supposed to make sacrifices for each other. And you didn’t make any. You just left me. Alone.”

“You weren’t alone. Your father – ”

“Died,” Keith flatly cut her off. “A lot of people have been doing that lately.”

Krolia went quiet, a spike of ice going through her spine. She had always expected that someday, someday, she would finally get back to her family, be together with them again after so long. And she had assumed that if she didn’t it would be because of  _her_  death, not one of theirs. But now…

“When?” she asked, in not much more than a whisper.

“When I was four,” Keith answered.

“And you – where did you – ?”

“Bounced around between a few dozen homes. Some were okay. Some were Hell. None of them lasted.”

“… I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. You couldn’t have.”

There was silence again. The two of them, mother and son, stared each other down, Keith crossed-armed and scowling, Krolia tall and still and unreadable. One the reflection of the other through a warped and colored mirror.

They probably could have stood like that forever if they both stubbornly refused to break the silence, but Krolia had to keep going, had to be the first to relent. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I wish my decision hadn’t… hurt you.”

“So do I.”

“But I meant what I said. Leaving you once was the worst experience I’ve ever gone through, and I’m not going to do it again. I don’t think I even could. I – I won’t lose you, not after I finally found you. I won’t. I’m your mother, Keith, and… I want to be part of your life again.”

Keith let out a breathy sound that was halfway between a laugh and a snort. “Seems a bit late in the game to be playing parent.”

“Keith, I promise, I – ”

“So what? You promised that the first time around, didn’t you? I know you did, I know you convinced Dad you were going to stick around. Do you want to know what my earliest memory is? You want to know? It’s Dad. Crying. Staring out the window through a telescope and crying. That’s it, the whole memory. And I didn’t figure it out for the longest time, but it was because of you, wasn’t it? He was looking for you. He was waiting for you to come back. So you can take your promise and shove it up your – ”

“This isn’t the same thing!” Krolia cried. “I left to keep you out of this war, but it’s clearly too late for that now. Now, the best I can do is keep you safe while you’re here, and I’ll stay right by your side to do it. Please, you have to give me that chance. You have to believe me.”

“Because you’ve given me so many reasons to trust you?”

“I saved your life!”

“After I told you  _not_  to!”

“Keith, please, you have to – ”

Keith shook his head, and when the light shifted on his face, Krolia could spot tear tracks that had escaped her notice before. “I  _can’t_. Not after – I can’t. You left. You left, and you can’t undo that.  _Everyone_  leaves, Krolia.” She wanted to butt in, tell him not to call her that, to call her mother, or mom, or… but she remained silent. “Everyone makes that promise,” he continued. “No one keeps it. Why would you be any different?”

“Because I’m – I – ” She heaved out a sigh. “I don’t suppose you’d ever be convinced to take me at my word?”

Keith’s ever-present scowl deepened. “I’ve tried that in the past. Never ended well.”

A beeping sounded suddenly from the cockpit, nearly surprising Krolia enough to make her jump. She had nearly forgotten where they were, and why they were here. Keith hadn’t, it seemed, since he moved swiftly to look at the screen that had emitted the warning, then slipped into the pilot’s seat, disengaging the autopilot.

“Everything all right?” Krolia asked.

“Fine,” Keith said. “We’re going to be hitting some turbulence in a moment, though.” His voice was flat, low, all business.

“We’re not done talking, you know, Keith.”

Keith ignored her. “Think I’ll be able to hold it steady, actually. So long as I ride it instead of fight it.”

“Keith – ”

“You might want to sit down, or at least grab hold of something. Don’t want to lose your balance.”

Krolia sighed and took a seat. “I really do promise, Keith.”

“It’ll slow us a bit, but I’ll keep to the designated turbulence penetration speed. Shouldn’t last too long.”

“You have to believe me. I’m not going to leave you, not again. Not after – ”

“Prove it.”

Krolia blinked. “What?”

Keith turned to look at her over his shoulder. His eyes were still rimmed in pink, but they seemed darker now, sharper, narrowed and shaded by a creased brow. “This war’s not going to come to an end overnight. You’re going to have plenty of time to leave, and plenty of time not to. You want me to trust you so badly? Give me a reason. Prove it.” He turned back around, eyes on the black sky stretched out beyond them for eternity.

“I will,” Krolia said. “I’ll prove it.”

Keith didn’t respond. He just flew the ship. Mother and son, reunited at long last, shooting through space in a cold, suffocating silence.

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, I angsted.


End file.
